My Story Conference – the second edition!

The second edition of My Story Conference will take place at Impact HUB Bucuresti, starting with 2 PM, on May 16 th 2015. The destiny has no connections with Chance, but with the Choice; we are not waiting for him, we chose to make him became true.

We Draw Your Future Association (DVT) is a non-governmental association founded by Visinel Balan, an young man who once he left the foster home he assumed the mission of achieving an independent life skills consolidation mechanism for institutionalized youth from Romania and founding the first Youth Center in which the mechanism mentioned above will be applied.

We truly believe that society can be develop through and by the young people’s support and we want to have near us as many of them as possible. We offer to everybody the chance to learn how to see life, how to know each other, how to develop, how to let their dreams to be higher than fears and actions which are stronger than words.

My Story Conference is a community empowerment demarche, unique in Romani, undertaken by We Draw Your Future Association (DVT) with the support of Romanian Commercial Bank (BCR), Impact HUB Bucuresti, Black Hat Production, Decat o revista, FEDEREII –Adult Association from Orphanages and Perso.RO.

We plan to pun in foreground the life stories of people who left the foster home with the purpose to create in collective mind a place for institutionalized child, in order to make it more visible and to decrease from the stigma attached to social condition. The institutionalized child is in the collective mind, a marginal, so that in his evolution in the socio –affective plan, he becomes more aware of it.

He child protection system does not prove to be quite effective in offering him a personal development direction. This is one of the reasons why we want more young people aged more than 13 years old from the Child Protection System to participate at My Story Conference. Also, this Conference is for those who at a certain time were part of this system and who were raised in a foster home.

This year’s edition will be held inside the Impact HUB Bucuresti, from 14:00. The event will be held in an artistic opening of Alma Nicole artist – winner of the competition 8 in a boat at TVR.

The first component of the conference will put in foreground the life stories of those people who left turn from a foster home. The main purpose is to decrease form the stigma attached to the social condition, through courage, support and motivation. A total of three speakers will hold the conference: Vasile Porumbaru (Chairman of the Future Youth Association)–“Color, appearance …, does it matter when you want to make a purpose in life?”; Ionut Ursu (medical volunteer ambulance) –“Foster home –it doesn’t represent m. I mean more than that…”and Ana Maria Ciobanu (reporter at “Decat o revista”magazine) –“In the last few years we wrote the stories of many young people from foster home …all of them were afraid not to be introduce as some victims … actually, we found out how strong they are.”We want to tell “children woke stories”,to prove them that the fact they are in a social content different than the cultural ideal, it doesn’t mean they are inferior to society. The second component of the conference is represented by theater workshop, in which the participants will tell their life experience/story. Starting from everyone’s dream, we will try to make a workshop objective. Another moment was the meeting with Melania Medeleanu TV presenter, who held a public speaking course for the three speakers and to the moderator. In order to participate as a speaker, the participants answered to our previous challenge to fill in the registration form.

Sometimes you have the impression that everything is ended up, life offers you a new beginning. You cannot come back in time to make a new beginning, but today you can start to build your future. My Story Conference can be the start that will help us to make the final we want – stimulating and strengthening life skills.What we get at the right moment is a dream came true.